the dream began long before the sleep overcame
me...
   lazy architect of the clouds:
what was it going to be this time:
per usual: castle, swan... a death mask -
ruminations of the future?

                     a violin quarter op. 17
no. 4... or as i imagined it before
sleep dragged me below the waves
into the deepest caves before it plucked
out my eyes and have me tears
or shed in watercolours...

   something so tender as this poem ought
to break into a thousand pieces...
or however many letters there are to match...

standing on Waterloo Bridge... playing that ******
violin... however crudely...
a pocket of fame so tiny that would
spread until... some other violinist heard
of the antics taking stage...
   a dream... that didn't catch me by surprise...
not lingering like a dream: proper...
which might take up at least the whole
morning of a tomorrow upon waking
and bewilder and amaze...
  
            such that i promised myself:
not a sip of that fine Mount Gay Eclipse
***... never: i hope never again will you drink
"thinking" you might write something:
at worst! tender sips only after something
blessedly sober was started during
the business of a day...

               an alternative to the Italian risotto
or a Spanish paella?
none other! the Biryani!
  oh the spices at my disposal...
a black cardamom pod
4 green cardamom pods
a piece of acacia bark (sorry...
  out of cinnamon!)
   3/4 tsp of fennel seeds...
caraway seeds, cumin seeds...
coriander seeds. black peppercorns...
a star anise...
6 cloves
      a bay leaf...

something from Norwegian poetry?
olaf bull?

og jeg, en levende mand, paa jorden hjemme
and i, a living man, with earth my dwelling...
som jeg, en død mand, paa jorden hjemme (begrenset)...

but i'm not going to learn Norwegian
on these isles...
it would make some sense
to learn Danish for a historical
whim or German...

then again... my bet it on either
Romanian or Turkish...
a today... at the Turkish barbers'
i only instructed him:

keep the length (of beard):
   but tidy the rest up...
tut(mak) uzunluk nın-nin sakal:
ancak temiz...

well i sat down in the waiting line while
the other turkish barber was finishing
off a customer... working with the electric
razor around the stubble...
strange sounds...
i've heard of iron stubble...
the sound of shaving never sounded
so... glass on a chalkboard...
a piano shattering...
something felt odd: like someone
was playing me a Turkish film
with Armenian dubbing...

so he shaved and shaved and i looked
on... does an electric razor mowing
stubble make that sort of, "sound"?!
it was only when my usual barber:
the one i modelled for once
when i came in like a homeless man
and 20kg overweight...
he took photos of before & after:
pointed me toward seat no. 2
did i finally come to grips with the sounds...

ha!
a cage with two budgies - budge-rigours...
budgerigars was placed in the corner...
two jittery little fellows...
i sat back closed my eyes and relaxed...
better than a *******:
ah... with ******* you need to staple your
eyes open to your eyebrows...
but getting your beard trimmed?
nothing to it... like kissing metal...
oddly enough either i was relaxed
or my barber was relaxed...
not a ******* pipsqueak from the two
birds...
a vibrating sense of contentment
a bit like...
when was the only time you saw
a bulldog content?
in the company of another bulldog...

now that's what i call a barber shop...
when he finished i was asked by
the other barber whether i wanted
to a cup of coffee...
my barber offered me a hot towel...
i refused both...
i'm pretty sure this was a way
to make new friends...
or rather: have some backup should
a funeral take place tomorrow...

maybe i have been living in England
for so long that... i might look English:
like the Turkish ******* remarked...
but i feel... neither here... nor there...
if i were to go back to my native birthplace:
i'd be alien too: not engrossed in
the politics in the culture in the everyday:
starting from: "born yesterday":
engrossed in the culture & politics of England...
but hardly "born & bred" as one
former fwend of mine: child of Egyptian /
Iranian immigrants remarked...
i can switch off from all the saturation
and read some Knausgaard in ******...

right now... i've just spent a mad hour cycling
and i'm going to sip some proper whiskey-esque
*** without the stealth assassin / an agitator
of a diluter of spirits... caffeine murderer of
a carbonated caramel ****...
i'll drink it straight over some ice...

an hour well spent...
  for all that's currently music: lyrical constipation:
i need to relearn how to breath:
to even think...
revisiting that dream i never had
that began with Haydn's op. 17 no. 4...
just the violins... no need for drum-tactic rhythm...
we're all "im-der-hier"... in the here...
"im-der-jetzt"... in the now...
but never really: must be lagging...
daydreaming or otherwise wishing it was
otherwise...

would taking the offer of a coffee and a hot
towel made so much of a difference...
or would i just have set there like
a ******* pile-on-steam-of-****?!
i love the smell of manure in the morning...
i love the smell of manure in the foggy morning...
i love the smell of manure when i'm
planting a new tree and it grows to be over
8ft tall after planting the original bonsai plum
some 7 years prior...

even in classical music:
there's the music that's there: played to death
& a second death that's boredom
that's only used to diffuse fame...
Haydn's op. 20 no. 4: that's how
a mousetrap ought to work...

niche listening: there will always be
someone reading something by Stephen King...
otherwise... spend a year on the oeuvre
of some composer...
at least the composers never fail:
produce "too much": then listen to it
being filtered down... sharpened to:
a bugging nugget of praise...

all that's pop is not necessary...
unless: utilised for pedagogic tactics...
breathe the air! there are no percussion instruments!
barricade the doors to your mind
with the wind of violins!

seems only fair that since i've had
my beard trimmed by a Turkish specialist...
speck? ***** & span... no...
speZ... if i am to write someone of my own
i'm drowning in the works of others
and there's 7am to mind...
there's defrosting two fridge-freezers too...
the sensibility of waking up
moderately sober...
all that's day and all that's a masquerade!

trivial things: poetry: porcelain...
but they shouldn't be so easily: quashed...
now that everyone can readily
read: write... somehow... long before
poetics was pushed aside...
of all people... if the Vikings are to be
somehow... envied... emulated...
ingenious thieves that they were...
at least they kept words somehow
sacred...
while they exhausted each limb from limb...
a body wed to the earth
a mind wed to the air...
and all congregating in sun, fire & water...
perhaps some mead some
frost... fog and shadow...

how i envy the almost first men
and their chemical eureka upon eureka of
the first intoxication with beer!
not this intellectual: morose flight of body
anchored down by the more heavier extraction
of run: run: ***-***-**-here-we-go!

let it not be another knock-out night for me
on this tired plank of wood i dare to call
ship: but i'm dried up on what's
language: trapped in conventionalities
of passer-by conversations that are hardly
that...

of course this couldn't be a lament:
i would regret a good conversation
since the *** is almost as good or if not better
than any whiskey...
a good conversation would get me off
my rockers all the more...
but then the fear of sobering up
in the middle of it...
for the proper K.O. i'll wait for the chemicals
to take charge... while i'll play both
mouse & fox & sneak downstairs for
a glass of milk...

architects of dreams: best to appease a
boredom of London by stripping it down to:
far away... Athens... here in quasi-Sparta
on the outskirts... the ******* emblems of
itching at the sky...
the ****** emblems of stadiums for
which football was made to be: ahem... "footed"?

bypass the standards of any language...
the nouns...
then work around the verbs...
and the adjectives that work as substitutes of verbs...
eh... prepositional, pronoun and conjunction
shrapnel...

presto scherzando: of Haydn's op. 20 no. 4:
a sort of violin does a pilgrims farewell
to the folk dance: hey hey hey trance
which reminds me of...
some modern song...
   very, very: modern...
                
it complete silence: or rather... memory
by now has become a drunken orchestra!
on the tip of my tongue...
ah! yes! corvus corax! herr wirt!
hey hey hey... there are accents of it...
littering Haydn's
presto scherzando: of op. 20 no. 4!

- and to think... i could have had a wife!
- and to think... i could have had a son!
- and to think... i could have had a daughter!

an uncle was a disappointment...
half of my grand-parentage i don't know...
beyond estranged...
cousins etc. long gone: still alive...
my maternal grandmother recently
estranged herself
from her grandson and her daughter
choosing a conspiracy of three
attitude with some cousin and her son...
while my grandfather...
there's pain: exhilarating...
quickly done away with you:
with a butcher's pardon on the guillotine...
then there's: pain: numbing...
relapsing... erosive...

well... i hardly imagine having enough time
to... somehow conjure up a connection
between corvus corax's herr wirt
& haydn's presto scherzando: of op. 20 no. 4...
beside the fire of the television:
how lacerating the warmth
how tongue numbing how...
if only this insomnia was
somehow translated into a transparency...
like my melancholy is a perpetual
hard-on...

all that's intelligent while only ending up
being mere posturing...
all that's plain daft while only ending up
being mere arrogance...
the insensible Kafkaesque tribalism
of the urban peoples...
the masculine aspect forgotten?
new: automated new: muscle loss?
the new wheat? juxtapositions around
cat's persistent inquiry whether the window
is somehow open...
or whether the bed is not yet slept in?

throw in a glass of milk come 1am
and... beside all that's to come with the chemical
circus... from now...
docile wolf still itching: bite a harvest...
sliding doors... the quintessential British
film from the 1990s...
it has to be...
that's me... dreaming of Swiss cheese...
cut with a guillotine... not a knife...
better still...
                     how familiar a curry has
become...
but you try and find the proper rice
to make a biryani not look like some phlegm
suckling stuck together grains of rice...
of a risotto or a paella...

Was soll denn das nun, klagt unsere Welt,
mir wird so warm und immer wärmer,
ich schwitze schon und krieg gleich Fieber.
Ist das ein Virus, der mich befällt?

Das sind die Menschen, ach du Schande.
Sind die denn noch ganz gescheit?
Greifen ihren eigenen Wirt an,
wohl zum Denken nicht recht im Stande.

Die Menschheit ist schon eine Plage,
sie hat sich viel zu schnell vermehrt.
Ihr wird es an den Kragen gehen,
dauert ja nur noch ein paar Tage...

Ich frier mich ein und befreie mich
von dem ganzen Schmutz und Schund
und fange dann von vorne an,
auf Menschen doch verzichte ich.